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Being Darryl Strawberry

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"We were throwbacks," pitcher Bobby Ojeda has told baseball writers. "We were like, 'Gimme a steak, gimme a fuckin' beer, gimme a smoke, and get the fuck out of our way.'"

Following their 1986 National League Championship series victory over Houston, they nearly destroyed an Ozark Airlines plane with a drunken food fight. Strawberry and Dwight Gooden "exposed their penises and were inviting the women to lick this and lick that," writes Jeff Pearlman in his 2004 book about the World Series champs.

"I wanted to break the cycle, because [alcoholism] is genetic," Strawberry says now. He adds that his own struggles have helped him understand the plight of his father, whom he occasionally visits in San Diego. (His mother and guiding force, Ruby Strawberry, died in 1995.)

Strawberry characterizes his drinking habit as a coping mechanism. "As long as there was alcohol in my bloodstream," he writes in Recovering Life, "I was relieved of the incredible pressure I felt on my shoulders, the pressure of being someone else's rising star."

Though a subsequent cocaine addiction was followed by more rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous sessions, nowadays the church is Strawberry's sole tool for recovery. He says he's been clean for "four or five years" and that he's never tempted to have a drink or a snort.

"I don't have these raging feelings inside like most people talk about," he says. "I don't go to nightclubs and hang out. You'll never see me down there at the Landing or places like that, because that's not how I live. I live as a believer. When you give your life to Christ and serve the Lord, you walk a different way; you're free. You're not in bondage."

Tracy says her husband's addictions are a result of the pain he suffered as a child, and Church on the Rock can help cure them. "The church offers people help though restoration," she says. "They believe in getting to the root of the problem and restoring the wholeness of an individual."

Last November Dwight Gooden was released from a prison in Gainesville, Florida, where he served seven months for violating his probation by taking cocaine.

Strawberry is rarely in touch with the man, once his best friend on the Mets, whose own career was similarly unhinged by drugs and alcohol. When asked if he sees any of himself in the former Cy Young winner, Strawberry replies curtly, "You just hope and pray that he works through it, like you would for anyone."

Strawberry is plainly annoyed by the question. "The average Joe Blow probably went through the same thing I went through and Doc Gooden went through," he says. "But his life is not publicized. You got lawyers, doctors that are addicted to cocaine, losing their licenses, losing everything because of it. I only hurt myself. What if God was to expose everybody?"

Adds Ray Negron, George Steinbrenner's special assistant: "Did he have problems in the past? Yeah, like everyone else, but he's Darryl Strawberry, so it was publicized more. He's always had this incredible heart and has always given everything of himself, but the disease of addiction makes for a demon."

Strawberry deflects questions about why he started using cocaine ("Who knows? It's just something you try.") and what he might have achieved had it not been for his drug habits.

"I don't sit around and harp on my past, saying, 'Baseball could have been....' My purpose is to help bring restoration into people's lives, to help mend the lost and the broken. My real purpose wasn't playing baseball. Most people think it was, because you get worldly status. Worldly status means nothing when it comes to kingdom status."

Yet even at Church on the Rock, the domed, sprawling house of salvation Strawberry has adopted as his own, people seem most interested in his earthly status.

Leaving the sanctuary after a recent Wednesday-night service, Strawberry's accosted by a star-struck congregation member. "Didn't you play for the Mets or something?" the woman asks, inching towards him. "My husband wants to meet you. Please, please?"

Before Strawberry can answer, she brings her wide-eyed husband over, who sticks out his hand to grasp his idol's flesh. "I really enjoyed the years you were playing," he says. "I really admired you."

"We're just here because we love the Lord," counters the slugger, still smiling.

Throughout his life, whenever things seem to be going well for Strawberry — whether it be success at the ballpark, new love or renewed faith — he turns into Bill Buckner and lets the ball go through his legs.

Even his recent incarnation in O'Fallon seems precarious and potentially short-lived. Days after attending that Wednesday-night service at Church on the Rock, Strawberry abruptly left town for Los Angeles, leaving his wife to wonder whether if he would ever return.

Tracy would not comment on the details, though she asked a week after her husband's departure that Riverfront Times spike this story and declined to disclose where Strawberry might be and why he left.

Reached by phone, Strawberry says the marriage is not in peril and that he journeyed to Southern California because of a baseball clinic and a "situation with his daughter" that needed to be resolved, the details of which he would not delve into.

"I plan to come back. That's my home. I'm just away right now. Tracy is upset because I had to take care of some personal business as far as my oldest daughter. She didn't know if I was coming back right away. I told her I'll be back."

Strawberry, meanwhile, long ago grew weary of being pegged the black Ted Williams. More recently, he's even grown tired of being Darryl Strawberry. Who among us cares to hear constant reminders of squandered potential?

The Straw Man, perhaps, has at last come to terms with his careless voyage.

"I have no hard feelings about life," he says softly. "Everyone has their own journey to go through. Everyone suffers, and everyone has problems. The real key is trying to get through them."

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